The painful disbelief on Admiral
Piett's face hit Mon
Mothma like a wound. While she searched for something comforting to
say,
General Dodonna said quietly, "I'm sorry, he hasn't really left us any
room for doubt."

Piett's hospital room had turned
into an impromptu
conference chamber. The room was small enough that Dodonna, Rieekan,
Calrissian
and Mon Mothma had difficulty crowding into it without accidentally
elbowing
each other or stepping on each other's feet. It was made even more cosy
by the
presence of Dr. Tomczyk, who hostilely eyed the senior staff and looked
ready
to boot them out at the first sign that his patient was getting
fatigued. For
now, the Admiral was sitting up with no apparent difficulty, and
adrenaline and
shock seemed to be keeping him fully awake. He ran a hand over his
forehead and
through his hair, then shook his head. "What was he doing in the
launching
bay?"

"Trying to
arrange his escape route, apparently," sighed Mon Mothma. "Commander
Antilles had been working on a back-up plan for sending a Lambda
strike force to
Coruscant." Time enough later, she thought, to
deal with
any repercussions of that. Though from
Antilles' shame-faced look as he'd
admitted it to her, he was already giving himself enough grief over it
that any
other disciplinary action might be extraneous. "Needa'd found out about
it
and volunteered to be one of the pilots."

General
Calrissian
added, "he must have figured out that Security was closing in on him.
Maybe he'd have skipped out when the team got to Coruscant; maybe he'd
have
vanished before then. Looks like we're not going to know, at this rate."

"You want me
to talk with him," said Piett.

"You've known
him longer than any of the rest of us," pointed out General Rieekan.
"If
anyone's got a chance of getting through to him …"

"You tried
negotiating already?"

There was a
shrug
from General Calrissian. "Sure. Captain Needa's got nice, simple
demands.
We let him off the planet without taking any action against him, and
when he's
a safe distance away he'll let Madine go unharmed. We try to stop him,
and Madine's
dead. Actually," Calrissian added thoughtfully, "I think his exact
words were Ôand I'll fry the General's toupee'. I do imagine
he plans to fry
the rest of him, too, though."

Piett frowned
at
the three Generals and Mon Mothma. "If I talk with him, do I have
anything
to offer?"

Nobody
answered.

"Great," the
Admiral said bitterly. "Negotiate
with no bargaining points. I'm glad you give me the easy jobs around
here."

"Can we afford to
let
him go?" Mothma asked the others.

Dodonna seemed
to
be studying the floor. "I'm beginning to wonder if we've got any
choice."

Piett sighed.
"Okay.
Let's see what he has to say."

Dr. Tomczyk
shouldered his way over to the bed to supervise setting up the portable
com-unit, as if afraid that the assembled Generals and Head of State
would
break something. When the com was safely installed on the bed tray,
General
Calrissian keyed in the code for the Lambda. A moment
later, the interior
of the shuttle's cockpit appeared on the screen. Captain Needa was
tinkering
with the controls, and said without looking up, "just a second. Just
checking to make sure weapons are on-line."

"Angus,"
said Piett.

Needa started a
little as he looked up at the screen, then plastered a big, fake smile
on his
face. "Grisha!" He exclaimed, with overdone chumminess. "So,
they're using the Ôget his old friend to talk with him and
make him feel guilty'
trick."

Piett sighed.
"Yes.
That's it. Angus, what the hell are you doing?"

"Escaping. Or
trying to."

"But -- but
why? Why do it to begin with?"

Needa shook his
head. "Oh, no. I'm not the kind of villain who tells all his plans to
the
heroes so they can save the day. I'm the kind of villain who escapes
with his
skin intact."

"Angus, for
Gods' sakes --"

Piett's old
friend
suddenly looked very serious. "Look, Grigori, I'm sorry. I didn't mean
all
this to happen to you." He went on, belying his statement that he
wasn't
going to explain himself, "it wasn't a fiendish plan. I found out your
code by accident and figured I'd use it as a cover, I didn't expect
your Rebel
buddies to start witch-hunting. How's the ulcer?"

"Terrific,"
snapped Piett. Damnation. A man is your friend for years -- hell, for
decades
-- and then he goes and does this. If I
were Darth Vader, Piett thought, I'd
teleport into that shuttle and strangle him. Or go back in time, grab
him by
the scruff of his neck, and shake him till he agreed not to betray the
Rebellion. "You owe it to me to tell me," he said, the
cold anger in his
voice surprising him. It certainly seemed to surprise Captain Needa.
"What
did you do it for?"

"For? For
credits, of course. Betraying the Empire after twenty years of service
doesn't
do much to build up your retirement money."

"You never
had any
retirement money."

"And,"
Needa went on, "it may have escaped your notice, but I'm not a big fan
of
Lord Vader."

"But he --"

"I know what
he did." Needa leaned closer to the com-link. "I'm sick of him
getting away with everything. I'm sick of everyone treating him like
his
circuits are made of gold!"

"He still
spared your life, because he knew you were a good officer. He didn't
deserve
this from you."

Needa's eyes
widened and he gave an angry snort. "Oh, poor Lord Vader! You see what
I
mean? The man makes your life a hell, and now you think he's some kind
of
angel. Firelord, Grigori! You had nightmares just from thinking he was going
to
strangle you. What kind of dreams do you think someone has when he has strangled
them?"

A twinge of
guilt
hit Piett. He remembered Needa's limp form as the Captain was dragged
away
after his near-death experience with Vader. He remembered how it had
felt to
try and keep his face and voice calm, and report to the Dark Lord,
while his
oldest friend was strangled in front of him. And he remembered Needa in
the medbay
afterward, when Piett went to visit him, closing his eyes and
whispering "I
don't want to talk about it."

Needa always
wanted
to talk about everything. But they'd never talked about this.

"Look, Angus,"
Piett said suddenly. "Come out of there and let Madine go. I'm sure we
can
--"

"Oh, sure! The
Rebs are just going to pat me on the head? 'It's okay that you've
betrayed us
and killed our security chief and kidnapped our General, all is
forgiven?'"
Angus sighed. "Chat time's over, Grisha."

"All right,
all right. What do you want?"

"Same as
before. I get off Omean alive, with no one following me, and I let
Madine go
when we reach a neutral planet. And everybody's happy."

General Rieekan
said from the side of Piett's bed, "let us talk with Madine."

Needa shrugged.
"No
problem. Hey, Ensign Madine, the bigwigs want to talk with you." The
grin
on Needa's face as he said that added the implication that "bigwigs"
was yet another toupee joke.

A very
pissed-off
looking Madine, with his hands restrained together in front of him,
joined
Needa in the com image. He had a black eye and blood had dried around a
cut on
his lip, but otherwise he seemed intact. "Don't negotiate with him,"
the General said fiercely. "Don't let him get away with this, it's not
worth it."

"Noble, isn't
he?" put in Needa. "Makes me just want to cry. 'Bye, guys. Let me off
the planet or you've got yourselves another dead hero." He cut the
transmission.

The others were
all
looking at Piett expectantly, as if he could somehow solve all their
problems.
Piett sighed again. "I don't think he's bluffing. He hates Madine. If
he
thinks he's not going to make it out of this alive, he'll take Madine
with him."

"So what the
hell do we do?" asked General Calrissian

He didn't get
any
answer.

Three days.

He'd been lying
here on display for three days now.
There were another four days to go, unless Palpatine lost interest and
decided
to terminate him ahead of schedule.

Somewhere along
the
line would supposedly come this attempt to rescue him, but Vader
thought, I'm
not holding my breath for that. The
humorousness of that thought coming from
Darth Vader occurred to him, and he suppressed a groan. I
really must be
getting bored, he thought, I'm laughing at my own
bad jokes.

He tried to
remember if anyone had ever told him not to hold his breath waiting for
something, in all the time he had been Darth Vader. Most of the people
he
associated with wouldn't have dared to mention breathing in the Dark
Lord's
presence. But he thought he remembered … oh, yes. Someone had
said that to him, a
very long time ago. When they'd been installing his new respiratory
system, and
the timing of the comment had caused Vader, his doctor, and the man who
had
said it to all laugh so hard that Vader nearly overloaded the system
before he
could calm down.

The man who had
said it was Palpatine.

Vader sighed.
Palpatine, but back in the days before Vader thought of him as
"Palpatine".
Back when they were still close enough friends to call each other
"Diam"
and "Darth".

Actually it had
taken
quite a while for Senator Diam Palpatine to break himself of the habit
of
calling his friend and co-conspirator "Anakin". They'd had some bad
moments when Vader was afraid that Diam would give the whole game away
by
calling him "Anakin" in public. Vader had stopped acknowledging his
old name, and wouldn't pay the Senator the slightest bit of attention
unless he
called him "Darth". It had annoyed Diam no end, but it got the job
done.

Damn. It was a
long
time since he'd thought back to those first days and months of figuring
out how
to be Darth Vader. He wished he hadn't thought back to them now.
Remembering
made him feel Ð well, there was no other way to put it. It made
him feel
lonely.

Those days had
been
fun. There'd been hard work as well, getting used to his partly
mechanical
body. But just the freedom of having legs that he could walk on again,
and a
respiratory system that was under his control … compared
with the crippled
existence he'd thought he'd be forced to endure, life as Darth Vader
had seemed
to hold infinite promise.

And there'd
been
the fun of plotting the shape they wanted the future to take. Holed up
in Diam's
country house and working out, step by step, the path by which they
would lead
the Jedi Order to ruin. Creating the script for the drama in which Diam
Palpatine was to become the saviour of the galaxy. Oh yes, it was fun.
He
remembered them giggling, for gods'
sakes Ð well, they'd been rather drunk at
the time; it was before Vader had decided to rely entirely on infusions
for his
sustenance Ð as they schemed how best to knock the Jedi Order
onto its damned
sanctimonious collective ass.

He wondered
when it
had changed. When did they stop being two friends getting drunk
together on
alcohol and power? When had they become no longer "Diam" and "Darth"
but "My Master" and "My Friend"?

Gods damn it.
He
had to stop thinking about this. He had to stop, as his mother would
have said,
crying over smashed sandcastles. Diam Palpatine wasn't his friend
anymore;
hell, that Diam Palpatine barely even existed in the creature that was
now the
Emperor. If he let himself keep moping over what used to be, he'd just
have a
harder time crushing the Emperor, if he ever got the chance.

But the
memories
were still nibbling at his mind.

He did remember
a
moment when he'd realised that things had changed.

It was when
he'd
come back from that long campaign in the Riidara Sector, expecting as
usual to
be granted an audience with the Emperor. It had then been three days
before
Palpatine had deigned to see him. And when Vader was finally admitted,
Palpatine had wanted to talk about nothing but the Force. About what it
was
like for Vader, what he saw and felt when he used it. And about the
Force-enhancing drugs that Palpatine had his scientists working on.

He remembered
watching Diam's familiar yellow eyes and thinking that they didn't look
familiar at all any more. Seeing the distant gleam in those eyes and
wondering
just how many Force-enhancing drugs the Emperor had been trying out on
himself.

That time,
Palpatine
had offered to share the drugs with Vader. He hadn't been very happy
when his
old friend suggested that the drugs might not be a great idea. In fact,
Vader
remembered, Palpatine had accused him of sounding just like Obi Wan
Kenobi.

The next week
Vader
was sent on another mission, to wipe out the crime empire of Baccara
Chovitza.
When he came back from that one, the Emperor didn't offer to share his
drugs
again. He had, however, taken great pleasure in proving that his
strength in
the Force was now even greater than Darth Vader's.

Ha, thought
Vader.
What a boost for the galaxy-wide anti-drugs campaigns. Palpatine could
be their
poster child. 'Hey kids, don't do drugs or you'll look like Emperor
Palpatine'.
Of course, Vader himself didn't have much room to talk. He could be the
poster child for the Ôdon't drink and fly' campaign.

So
where are we
now,
Vader asked himself. What became of the senator and the young
officer who
first met in a bar, and drank themselves under the table bitching about
the Jedi?

One of
them is
drug addict and rules the galaxy, and the other has fucked up his last
chance
to build a relationship with his family and is under sentence of death.

No. Gods damn
it,
no, he couldn't let himself do this. He was back to where he'd been
when Darth
Vader was first created. Flat on his back and drowning in self-pity.

He owed it to
himself not to do this. To himself, and to the Diam Palpatine who had
been his
friend.

In his mind, he
could hear Diam's voice on that day it
had started. He could see the Senator pacing up and down in the
hospital room,
see the near panic on his face, hear the desperation quivering behind
his
words. "Anakin, don't do this. Please. Don't make me lose the best
friend
I've got."

He could hear
his
own bitter voice as he demanded, "why? I've lost me, why
shouldn't you?"

It was after
the
eighth or ninth time he'd tried to commit suicide, lying there in his
hospital
bed. Diam had made him promise not to try again, until he'd had a
chance to
talk Anakin out of it. So far Diam hadn't been having much luck.

"Dammit,
Anakin!"

"'Dammit,
Anakin,' is not much of an argument."

"No, dammit,
listen to me. It doesn't have to end like this."

He remembered
his
fury surging up, tempting him to annihilate himself in one blast of
power and
take Palpatine with him. "You try it!" he'd yelled. "You think I'm
being so damned selfish, you try living like this! Try knowing you'll
never be
able to move again without a room full of machines to help you! Try
knowing you've
thrown your entire life away, and the galaxy has seen you do it, on the
godsdamned evening news!" His voice got quieter. "You know what
everyone's going to see when they look at me? They'll see my eye
leaking down
my face. They'll see my ribs sticking out of my chest. They've watched
it all
on the News of the Galaxy while they
were eating their suppers!"

The pain of it
had
become so much a part of him, it was almost comforting. "And you know
what
else they'll see?" he whispered. "Even if I get to the point where I
don't look like a monster any more? They'll see a drunken loser who
used to be
the Hero of the Republic until his wife walked out on him and he flew
into a
building." He wanted to laugh or cry, but instead he just spat out, "so
much for the great Anakin Skywalker."

Palpatine
grabbed a
chair and set it next to the bed. He sat down, leaning close to Anakin,
with a
desperate eagerness on his face. "Okay, here goes. You promise to stay
alive long enough for me to tell you my plan?"

Curiosity more
than
anything else made Anakin say, "yeah. I promise."

"What if
Anakin Skywalker were dead? Then he could be a hero again. And you
could have a
second chance."

"Diam? What
are you talking about?"

Diam grinned.
"The
same thing you've been talking about. With a twist. Let's say the
galaxy
believes that Anakin Skywalker's died. Everyone feels all mournful and
noble
and says nice things about you. You're enshrined as a hero. The End.
Meanwhile,
you're actually in hiding at my house. I hire Dr. Hadasht to keep
working on
those prosthetics plans she was developing. We build you a new body.
You can
wear a mask, so nobody knows who you are. And hey presto. Goodbye
Anakin
Skywalker, hello man of mystery. No more Jedi trying to control you, no
more having
to work inside the chain of command. You'll have the chance to do
everything
you couldn't do before."

It was such a
crazy
idea, Anakin had started laughing. "That's it. You've gone insane."

"No,"
Palpatine said quietly. "I haven't."Anakin decided that Diam had been
reading too many comic books. That was the only universe in which this
idea of
his would work. "We'd never pull it off without being caught. Anyway,
you
don't know this Ônew body' idea will work. You're making it
up."

"Fine,"
joked Palpatine. "If it doesn't work, then you can kill
yourself."
He glanced down at his clasped hands, then looked up again, suddenly
deadly
serious. "Anakin, listen. I'm going after the Jedi, whether you're
alive
to help me or not. I'll do it without you if I have to. I don't want to
do it
alone, but I will. But don't you want to be here for it? Don't you want
to see
them fall? Don't you want to be the one who pushed them over the edge?"
His voice got so soft that Anakin almost couldn't hear it. "Don't you
want
to see Obi Wan Kenobi's face, when everything he believes in is gone?"

A sudden sound
jolted Darth Vader back to the present.

Sound? What the
hell? There weren't any sounds. The display case prevented all sounds
from
reaching him. Unless the Emperor had come back for another round of
playing
games with Vader's mind.

There it was
again.
A creaking that seemed to come from the display case itself. As if
something
had grabbed it by the corners and was tearing it apart.

His pulse rate
jumped, and he cursed himself for getting so caught up in his memories.
He
fought to see whatever might be happening outside the case, but his
eyes couldn't
pierce the Great Hall's dimness.

One of the long
sides of the display case snapped loose from the other three sides, and
tumbled
onto the marble floor. The case's ceiling and the three other sides
were simply
yanked into the air and hurled across the Hall. Vader heard them
faintly as
they clattered to the floor, a startlingly long distance away.

There was a
popping
sound and his left wrist started to tingle. It took a moment for him to
realise
that the restraint around that wrist must have been opened. As the
other
restraints followed, the lights around the Hall's ceiling suddenly
glowed into
life.

For a few
seconds
he could only blink against the light. He was struggling to sit up, his
body
still so numb that it might as well not have been there. He managed to
push
himself into a sitting position. Then he did feel something. Someone's
fingers,
brushing across his forehead. A sensation as if someone had leaned over
him and
their hair had swept over his face. And then their lips, pressed
against his
cheek.

He still could
barely feel his arms, but he reached out and clutched her to him.

It could only
have
been a few more seconds before they let go. His eyes had adjusted to
the light,
and he saw her now as she stepped back from him. It had been only three
days
since he'd seen her, but he thought she looked different than he
remembered.
She was thinner, he thought, and paler, and she was wearing a black
outfit that
reminded him incongruously of the uniform of the New Forces. But her
shy little
grin as she looked at him was glorious. He wasn't sure that he'd ever
seen her
looking so happy. Certainly, she'd had few enough reasons to smile that
way at
him.

"You're still
attached to this thing," she said, suddenly business-like again. "Is
it -"

"The infusion
tubes," he told her. "In my back. You can undo them, it's all right."

"It's okay to
just pull them out?" she asked, stepping behind him.

"Yes, don't
worry. The sockets will close automatically."

He heard the
faint
wheeze as the infusion units shut themselves off. Cautiously he shifted
himself
off of the platform where he'd been lying for so long, a little worried
that
his legs wouldn't hold up beneath him. So far they seemed to work,
although for
safety's sake he clutched onto the edge of the platform. One of his
booted feet
bumped against the side of the display case that Leia had torn off
first. He
saw her glance down at it, and the plastisteel sheet skidded across the
floor,
out of their way.

What was it
Palpatine had said about Leia? That she was proving to be an apt pupil?

Leia reached
out to
support him as he planted himself more firmly on his feet.

"Tell me
quickly," said Vader. "What's happening?"

"Your friends
have launched an uprising," she said. "I don't know how many are
involved. There've been some explosions. There's fighting in the
corridors,
between Palace Guards on our side, and Imperial Guards and
stormtroopers
against us."

"Luke?"

"He's all
right. That is … physically he's all right." That would have
to do for
now; her expression showed that they would do a lot of talking about
this
particular question. "I saw him just now in the corridor, with the
Palace
Guards and General Mulcahy."

"Mulcahy."
Vader smiled at the name of his successor as Commander of the New
Forces. Gods
damn, the man must be eighty if he was a day. It offered some
encouragement to
a mere fifty-something like Vader, even if he did still feel like his
body was
in a different solar system.

Vader looked to
the
foot of the platform, on which stood the pedestal displaying his
helmet, mask
and lightsaber. He crossed to the pedestal, pleased to note that his
legs did
seem to be doing what they were supposed to. He snapped the lightsaber
to its
place on his belt, as he did so glancing at Leia and noticing that she
wore a
lightsaber on her belt as well. When he picked up his mask, his numbed
hands
fumbled and he nearly dropped the thing. He leaned back against the
display
platform, taking a steadying breath. He tried to focus on the simple
task of
putting on his mask, but unless he waited for his nerves to wake up, it
was
going to be hellishly awkward.

He studied
Leia's
beautiful face, knowing how rare it would be to look on her without his
mask
intervening.

"Leia,"
he said quietly, "help me put this mask on."

She nodded.
"What
do I do?"

"It's fairly
simple, if your hands aren't asleep. It fastens onto the breathing mask
–
yes, that's right. And then on to the neck piece Ð there. Then
the helmet just
slips over it-- "

She settled the
helmet on his head, and it clicked into place.

My Gods. He was almost
himself again. Now there was just the little matter of not being able
to feel
one damned wisp of the Force.

He looked at
his
daughter, and was relieved to see her smiling bravely up at him. His
reappearance in full Darth Vader mode had not, after all, caused her to
flee
screaming from the room.

She gripped his
arm, and he reached over to clasp his hand around hers. "Let's get out
of
here," Vader said.

Then a familiar
voice seemed to roll at them from all corners of the room, and drape
oozingly
around them.

Another
explosion
shook the corridor. The emergency lights winked out for a moment, then
faded
back into existence, seemingly dimmer than before.

"One thing's
for sure," Han muttered, "they're gonna have to do a lot of repair
work around this palace."

So far they had
encountered no one except one little waste disposal droid, that
squeaked in
apparent fright when it saw them, but kept skittering along the hallway
in the
direction opposite to that in which Han and Chewie were going. If it
had been a
more advanced model, Han would have blasted it to stop it from
informing anyone
of their escape. But these little rubbish droids had no ability to send
out-going
communications; they could only receive messages that told them their
next
assignments. Han was a little worried, though, by the haste with which
the
droid was trying to get away from whatever he and Chewie were heading
toward.

All of the
doors they
had passed were stuck in the open position, just like the door to their
cell.
At first Han had been a little worried about that, too, wondering
whether they
were going to get inundated by a rush of fellow escaping prisoners.
That could
be good, since it would provide a distraction from Han and Chewie. But
he'd had
some experience with large-scale prison escapes, and he didn't like
them much.
There were always bound to be some nutcases involved who were more
interested
in tearing their fellow prisoners limb from limb than in escaping
efficiently
like good, sensible sentient beings.

But thus far,
no
other escapees had appeared. The few rooms that Han had cautiously
glanced into
seemed to be offices, and were just as uninhabited as the corridor. The
majority
of the detention cells must be on another level, maybe one that hadn't
suffered
a power outage. Han's chronometer told him it was after 2130, which
would
explain why there wasn't anybody in the offices. Even Imperial
employees had to
get off work sometime.

Han and Chewie
rounded a corner, and nearly ran into an Imperial officer with a
blaster rifle.

Han and the
officer
both yelled, and Han levelled his own rifle at the other man's chest.
He didn't
fire, though, because the second he'd seen them, the Imperial had flung
down
his gun and thrust his hands up in the air. "Don't shoot, Solo!" the
man shouted. "We're on your side!"

"We"
consisted of a group of men a few paces behind the officer. About
twelve,
probably, Han thought. Most of them were in civilian clothes, but there
were
three in the armour of stormtroopers. All of them held blaster rifles,
and the
civilians had blaster pistols and other weapons holstered or jammed
into their
belts. So far the other men had frozen, and made no move to drop their
weapons
or to fire. They were waiting, Han figured, to see what he did to their
leader.

"Who the Hell
are you?" Han demanded.

The officer
swallowed, but said in a steady voice, "Lieutenant William Iddims. I
was
one of Lord Vader's staffers here in the Palace before he defected."

"And these
guys?"

One of the men
in
civvies, with a Corellian accent a Hell of a lot thicker than Han's
own,
answered truculently, "we were all members of Lord Vader's bodyguard.
When
he switched sides, we lost our jobs or were demoted Ð those of
us who weren't
executed."

"So why should
we trust you?" snapped Han.

"Because we're
not shooting at you?" suggested Lieutenant Iddims.

Chewbacca
growled
that he had a point.

"Unh-hunh."
Han lowered the rifle a little, but didn't take his finger off the
trigger. "What's
going on around here?"

"We're in the
middle of a palace revolt," Iddims said. "To rescue Lord Vader. Moff
Nevoy sent us to free you two."

"Who's Moff
Nevoy?"

"Moff of
Coruscant. He's leading the revolt. Can I pick up my rifle now?"

"Hang on a
second. What about Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker? You know anything
about
them?"

Iddims nodded.
"They're
being freed as well. I think General Mulcahy's team went to fetch them.
If all
goes well, we'll be meeting them at Landing Bay Four."

Han sighed.
"Okay,"
he said, finally removing his finger from the rifle's trigger. "You
watch
yourself though, pal. Remember Wookiees don't like it when people shoot
their
friends."

"I'll
remember," Iddims said dryly, retrieving his blaster.

"What now?"
Han asked.

"That way,"
replied Lieutenant Iddims, nodding his head in the direction Han and
Chewie had
been going.

They set out
again,
at a cautious but steady pace. Two of the stormtroopers and two of the
guys in
civvies hung back to bring up the rear, putting Han, Chewbacca and
Lieutenant
Iddims near the centre of the group. Han eyed Iddims warily, still half
expecting the man to whirl around and blast him. The Lieutenant had a
thin,
somehow scholarly looking face that seemed at odds with his nose which
had
certainly been broken, maybe more than once. Noticing Han's scrutiny,
Iddims
glanced over and asked, "how'd you get out of your cell? The power
outage?"

"Yeah. It
opened the door. How'd you know who I was?"

"Seen your
wanted posters. And you're the only person in this palace who'd be
running
around with a Wookiee."

"Good point."
There was another distant rumbling, and the corridor around them seemed
to
shudder. "What's with all these explosions?"

"This wing of
the detention block's right under Imperial Guard Headquarters. That's
where the
worst of the fighting's going on." Iddims gave an appreciative grin as
he
said, "we bombed the place as an opening ceremony for tonight's
festivities, but a lot of the Red Idiots are still alive and fighting."

"And we're
walking toward them?"

Iddims
shrugged. "Only
way out except for the sewers."

After a few
more
turnoffs into branching corridors which assured Han that if Iddims and
his buddies
dumped them they'd be irretrievably lost, the men at the head of the
procession
halted. Two of them, Han saw as he caught up, were removing a panel
from the
wall. The resulting opening was about five feet wide, but only reached
to
partway up Han's thigh. The men who'd opened up the passageway switched
on the
lights on their blaster rifles and crawled into the hole.

The decidedly
displeased note to Chewbacca's growl reminded Han that Wookiees didn't
like
enclosed spaces. To be scrupulously honest, Han didn't like them much
either.
But this wasn't that enclosed,
right? And he sure wasn't going to sound
worried about it front of Lieutenant William Iddims.

Iddims shook
his
head. Lord Vader's former bodyguards were steadily crawling into the
wall and
disappearing.

"There, you
see, pal?" Han said to Chewie. "We haven't made you wear restraints
and pretend to be a prisoner, either, what more do you want from me?"

Chewbacca's
growl
told him, you go first.

Han gave a
shrug. "Fine."
Everyone was inside the passageway now except for him, Chewie, Iddims,
and the
four men behind them. Reminding himself that this passage was, after
all, a lot
bigger than the nooks and crannies he had to crawl around in whenever
he fixed
the Falcon, he got to his
knees and scrambled into the hole. Lieutenant Iddims was
right beside him.

As he shuffled
along on his hands and knees, Han glanced back to be sure that the
still
quietly grumbling Chewbacca had indeed followed him. The Wookiee was so
much
taller than the rest of them that he was having to worm along on his
belly. "You
okay, Chewie?" Han asked.

Chewie's only
answer was an aggrieved-sounding wuffet.

The man in
front of
them was one of the three stormtroopers. Well, this is fun, Han thought. Crawling
through the Imperial Palace with a stormtrooper's butt in my face. Don't
let
anyone tell you Corellians don't know how to have a good time.

There had to be
something more interesting to think about than stormtrooper's armoured
rear
ends. And other than the fact that his hands and knees were starting to
hurt.
Of course, chief among the most interesting things to think about was
the fact
that he might be about to see Leia again. But the thought of her being
somewhere in this exploding palace made him just plain scared, so he
wasn't
going to think about that, either. He asked Lieutenant Iddims, "so
what'd
you do as Vader's staffer?"

"Well, there
were a lot of us, but I was one of the guys who went through the
complaints
files and decided which ones should be passed on to Lord Vader."

Iddims gave a
brief chuckle. "No, not directly.
Not usually, anyway. There'd be some really ballsy person every now and
then
who'd want to go straight to the top, but that didn't happen too often.
No,
what we did was go through the complaints that were sent to other
departments.
The ones we figured Vader wanted to know about, we sent on to him."

"So what if
you figured wrong?"

"He'd strangle
us," said Iddims, in a tone
that made it sound like a joke. With Vader, though, it probably wasn't.
"Nahh,
he never did that unless you really screwed up. Like if you were
accepting
bribes or telling pretty girls you'd forward their complaints if they
slept
with you. He did strangle one guy who did that. It was pretty easy to
figure
out which files to send him, anyway. Anything that had to do with the
efficiency and welfare of the troops, or that really made the Empire
look bad,
Lord Vader would want to know."

The
Empire
always looks bad, Han thought. That's the whole point
of the Empire. But he just
asked, "like what?"

"Well, like
the last big project I was working on before Vader left. There was this
lady on
Nisivin who started a petition to have shields installed in the TIEs,
after her
son got killed as a TIE pilot. Vader was actually already working on
adding
shields to the TIEs, but anyway, the governor of the Nisivi Sector had
this
lady arrested. Luckily she didn't get executed or anything, Lord Vader
would
really have been pissed off about that. So anyway, I found the appeal
request
on this lady's sentence, and passed it on to Lord Vader. He got her
freed and
sent the governor to the spice mines. And I got to write the letter
offering
the Empire's apologies and telling her Lord Vader was giving the
shields
installation project his personal attention."

"So do all the
TIEs have shields, now?" Han asked. They sure hadn't seemed to in the
last
battle they'd fought against the Imperials.

"No, only a few
prototypes. When Lord Vader
defected all of his pet projects got scrapped."

Gods, thought Han, ain't
this all warm and fuzzy. Next thing,
Iddims would be telling him about Lord
Vader distributing Firelord Day presents to widows and orphans. Still,
though,
it was nice to know that not everyone who'd worked with the Dark Lord
lived in
deadly fear of him. It boded well for Han's chances to be part of a
decent
family life with his almost-father-in-law. Presuming, of course, that
they all
lived long enough to try it. And presuming that Leia could ever be
convinced to
stop hating her father.

Let's
see, is
there anything us guys could do to convince her? He couldn't
think of much,
except for family bonding techniques like him, Luke and Darth sitting
around
watching bryasha and drinking beer. But that sounded more like a sure
way to
get Leia to disown all three of them. He shook his head, banishing
their potential
family sitcom to some point in the misty future.

"You liked
working for him?" Han asked Iddims.

"Yeah, it was
a good job. Kind of scary sometimes, but that just helps you operate at
peak
efficiency, right?" They crawled on without speaking for few moments,
then
Iddims asked, "has he strangled anybody since he joined the Rebellion?"

"Not that I've
heard of," said Han.

"Shit. Now I
really want my old job back."

As they
crawled,
the hallway had seemed to be sloping gently upward. The ascent was so
gradual
that Han thought he might be imagining it. Now the guys in front of him
slowed
their crawl and finally stopped. He heard faint sounds of metal against
metal,
and figured the first two guys must be opening the other end of the
passage.

The light
changed,
from darkness illuminated by their blasters' emergency lights, to the
pale glow
of an evening sky. The noise level changed as well – quite
abruptly, as
something apparently exploded on top of them.

In seeming slow
motion, Han saw the men around him clapping their hands to their ears,
and
trying not to smash into the walls as the shockwave slammed against
them. Han
was knocked down and found himself staring at the floor of the
passageway, half
an inch from his nose.

As the
explosion
subsided, he could hear shouting voices and the sizzle of blaster fire.
Occasionally the firing was interspersed with the louder humming of
blaster
cannons, and the wail and thud of torpedoes.

"Lieutenant,"
hissed one of the men in front of them, though he hardly needed to
worry about
being quiet. "You ought to see this."

Lieutenant
Iddims
crawled toward the opening, followed by Han. The other men crouched
nearer the
walls to let them pass.

"Holy shit,"
whispered Iddims.

They were
looking
out at an open courtyard, above which the sky of Coruscant spread in a
lavender
glow. Ordinarily by this time of the evening, the pyramid-shaped solar
lights
at the edges of the courtyard would have already switched on. But
perhaps this
evening they were confused by the explosions blazing around them. Han
squinted,
trying to make out exactly what he was seeing. Across the courtyard,
the
building that should have stood there was transformed into a jagged
ruin. Han
saw human figures sheltering behind a large chunk of rubble, and in the
white
gleam of an explosion he saw that they were aiming a blaster cannon.
Aiming
upward.

He glanced up,
and
wanted to flatten himself against the floor again.

It was hard to
tell
in this light, but from the silhouette it looked like the ship above
them was a
skipray blastboat, and it was only about fifty metres above the level
of the
courtyard. Its pilot had it dancing away from the fire that soared out
of the
cannon below.

Han wondered
how
many men were in the skipray. If they had a gunner as well as a pilot,
he
should have been able to get a fix on the men and the cannon, and blow
the
whole lot of them into a collection of crumbs. But Han knew that
skiprays could
be operated by one man, in an emergency. If there was only one guy in
there,
maybe he was just trying to keep himself alive.

"We can make a
run for it across the courtyard," Han suggested. "They should be too
busy shooting at each other to notice us."

"No,"
said Iddims. "My job is to get you two out of here alive." He turned
to his troops and ordered, "this route's too dangerous; start heading
back."

Han was about
to
protest. He really didn't want to crawl all the way back through that
damn
passageway, and if he knew Chewie, the Wookiee was contemplating
ripping Iddims'
kneecaps off right about now.

Then Han
decided
that Lieutenant Iddims was absolutely right.

The skipray had
leaped out of the cannon's range, then sped down for another pass.
Whoever was
in there might not have the luxury of aiming, but he seemed determined
to empty
his entire complement of concussion missiles into the men on the
ground. They
scattered, several of them not fast enough. There was still one man at
the
cannon, and he fired at the speeding blastboat. The next second the man
and the
cannon both disappeared in flame.

"Shit,"
gasped Han, "the poor bastard hit it!"

The cannon's
last
shot had seared right into the blastboat's cockpit. It didn't look like
the
cockpit had been breached, but something was certainly damaged. The
blastboat
wavered uncertainly in the air, then reeled, flipped upside down, and
started
to fall. To fall right towards the wall with its droid service hallway
where
Han Solo was crouching.

"Back!"
yelled Lieutenant Iddims. "Now!"

This time Han
plunged into the passage at a crouching run; he hit his head on the
ceiling a
couple of times, but it was a damn sight faster than crawling. He saw
that
Chewie had moved over to the side of the passage to let the others get
past
him, and as Han reached his friend he shouted, "gods damn it, Chewie,
come
on! Move your furry ass!"

Chewie roared
something obscene back at him. Then the blastboat hit. Han, Chewbacca
and
Iddims were suddenly thrown together in one jumbled heap, the Wookiee
trying to
protect the two smaller humans from the impact of the crash.

It took a few
moments of lying there in the smoke-thickened darkness for Han to
decide that
he wasn't dead. Whether he was injured, though, was another question.
It'd be
just his luck if Chewie had crushed all his internal organs in trying
to save
him.

He could still
feel the blaster rifle in his hand.
Cautiously he felt around it till he found the emergency lighting
switch, and
flicked it on. That didn't help much at first, since the rifle was
under the
three of them. Han eased the blaster out from under the pile, hearing
as he did
so a groan from Iddims and a snarl from Chewbacca.

Amazing, thought Han. I
don't seem to be broken. He looked
back to what had been the opening of the
passageway, and couldn't see much of it. From what he could see in the
light of
the blaster, it looked like the skipray had landed right in front of
the hole.
There was an open corner that just might be big enough
for a human to
squeeze through, but Chewie sure wouldn't make it. Anyway, Han didn't
fancy
crawling around a blastboat that had just crashed. The damn thing was
probably
burning, and Imperial vessels had a disconcerting tendency to
self-destruct
when their computers decided they were critically damaged.

He looked
around at
Chewbacca and Iddims, both of whom were disentangling themselves from
the heap.

"You all
right? Both of you?" Han asked.

Chewie gave an
affirmative growl. Iddims didn't say
anything at first. The Imperial was scowling at his right arm, which,
Han
noticed, hung at a rather weird angle. "I think my arm's broken,"
Iddims commented, in a tone that sounded more annoyed than anything
else. He
shook his head impatiently. "Doesn't matter, I'm left-handed anyway."

Han said, "I
thought you said this was the way to not walk right
into the shooting."

The Imperial
officer
with the broken arm grinned at him. "Looks like we need to find another
way out."

A potted fern
was
incinerated next to Luke's head.

Luke ducked
down
further behind the overturned peach-coloured sofa, and fired his
blaster. He
hadn't even bothered to aim, just wanted to keep those stormtroopers on
their
toes. He resolved to do better on his next shot, though. After all,
blaster
power cells didn't last forever.

General
Mulcahy's
team had regrouped behind the meagre shelter of a circular couch with
ferns
growing out of its centre. Several of them had managed to shove the
peach sofa
over next to the circular one, though one of the soldiers had been
killed in
the process. Another two had died in the race across the huge open
space,
before they could reach even this rather pathetic cover.

Their opponents
were a group of stormtroopers, who had followed the same strategy and
sheltered
themselves behind the matching group of sofas at the other side of the
Great
Hall's door. To distract himself from being scared spitless, Luke tried
to
imagine what the sofas would think about this, if sofas thought. Must
be quite
a contrast to the scenes they usually witnessed. What did people
usually do
around these sofas, he wondered. Exchange desultory small talk while
sipping
cocktails, when there were receptions in the Great Hall? Actually he
didn't
even know what the Great Hall was used for, but receptions and banquets
seemed
like a good guess.

Luke fired
again,
more carefully, and saw one of the stormtroopers clap an armoured hand
to his
shoulder and fall back. Luke couldn't tell, though, if the man was
badly hit or
just singed. He wondered why the stormtroopers seemed to have thrown in
their
lot with the supporters of the Emperor. He would have thought at least
some of
them preferred Vader to Palpatine. Maybe only the most fanatically
loyal
stormtroopers got stationed in the Palace. Or maybe those stormtroopers
who
hoped the uprising would succeed were just lying low. After all, since
there
were stormtroopers on the Emperor's side, any troopers with Rebel
leanings
might get themselves killed by friendly fire. Luke wouldn't blame them
at all
if they were hiding under their beds till all this was over. At the
moment it
sounded like a very alluring option.

He wondered how
long they had before loyalist reinforcements turned up and blasted him,
Mulcahy, and their handful of surviving Guards. Damn it, if only he had
the
Force he could tear the blasters out of the stormtroopers' hands, or
explode
them, or --

His thoughts
were interrupted by running footsteps,
yelling, and one hell of a lot of blaster fire.

The firing was
so
intense that the stormtroopers' sheltering couch and fern trees were
all but
obliterated. As the blaster fire was succeeded by a strange empty
silence, Luke
stood up cautiously, grimacing at the sight of white-armoured corpses
sprawled
around the remains of their couch. It wouldn't have bothered him in the
old
days, but since the founding of the New Alliance, he'd spent a year
working
with former stormtroopers. The armour wasn't enough, any more, to make
him
forget that those were human beings lying there dead. He swallowed back
a wave
of nausea and told himself, better them than us.

Anyway, he
could
agonise about all this later, if he survived.

No one else
seemed
unduly worried by their opponents' demise. He heard cheerful, if
urgent,
voices, and turned to see their rescuers striding across the open space
toward
them. Luke recognised Moff Nevoy at the head of fifty or so soldiers,
most of
them in the black of the Palace Guards but a few, like Nevoy, wearing
grey-green uniforms instead.

"Osheen,"
General Mulcahy called jovially, struggling up from behind the couch.
"Come
to join the party?"

"You old
maniac," Nevoy complained as he reached Mulcahy's side, though he
couldn't
keep the relieved grin off his face. "Do you know what it does to my
blood
pressure, seeing you run around in a war zone?"

Mulcahy
snorted. "You
just need to watch your cholesterol."

Two of Nevoy's
soldiers had walked toward the Great Hall's ominously closed doorway,
to the
point Luke had reached when the forcefield stopped him. They were
running
hand-held monitoring equipment over the area, but from their
dissatisfied
frowns when they turned back to Nevoy, the monitors hadn't told them
anything
they wanted to know.

"I'm sorry,
sir," said one. "There's no trace of any technological origin for
this. I don't know what -- "

"The Emperor's
causing it," Luke interjected. "He must be. Leia's in there, she got
in with no problem, but none of the rest of us can reach the door."

Nevoy nodded.
"Lord
Vader's in there as well. And I wouldn't be surprised if our beloved
Emperor
were too." He sighed, then said to Mulcahy, "I've been in contact
with Dr. Hayashida and his team. They made it to the other entrance of
the
Hall, but now they've run into this same forcefield. Looks like His
Majesty's
got the place surrounded."

"What's
Hayashida doing now?" asked Mulcahy.

"I told him to
try and rendezvous with us here."

"Good. If dear
Palpatine is in there with
him, it's a good bet Lord Vader's going to need a doctor."

"Doctors won't
do any good if we can't get to him," pointed out one of the Palace
Guards.
"Do you want us to try firing on that forcefield, sir?"

Nevoy looked
far
from happy with any of his options. "I suppose it's worth a try." He
glanced at Luke. "What do you think?"

Luke was so
surprised at being asked, it was a moment before he could formulate any
words. "Yes
… it's possible, if the Emperor's doing this with his mind,
then enough
sustained fire might force him to work harder, distract him
…" Distract
him,
Luke's mind finished miserably, from whatever he's doing to
Leia and our
father. He gave a helpless shrug. "Then again, it
might not do anything
at all."

"I guess we
have to find out." Nevoy raised
his voice and commanded, "everybody move back. Get to maximum range."
As the troops moved warily away from the Great Hall's entrance, Nevoy
and
Mulcahy assigned details to stand guard at the various other entries to
the
huge open corridor. When the majority of their men were ranked along
the wall
farthest from the Great Hall, Nevoy stepped away from them and ordered,
"nobody
else fires until I give the order. I'm going to take the first shot."

My gods, realised
Luke, he's
afraid that forcefield will make the blast bounce back at him. And there was
a
very good chance that it might. It sounded like just the sort of detail
that
Palpatine would like. Luke opened his mouth to yell at Nevoy not to
fire, but
the Moff had already taken the shot.

The beam of red
blaster fire sliced across the vast room, until it reached that space
before
the door. Then the light seemed to spread, briefly swelling into a
glowing
cloud before it dissipated and vanished.

Luke didn't
think
he was imagining the fact that the men around him heaved a collective
sigh of
relief.

Nevoy stepped
back
into rank with the others. He cast a resigned, rueful look at Mulcahy
and Luke,
then he ordered, "fire at will."

The men obeyed.
The
air in front of the Hall glowed red. As he fired with the rest, Luke
struggled
to feel something, anything of what was going on. Any hint that the
Emperor's
forcefield might be weakening. But he couldn't sense anything. He
thought
bitterly, there might be a whole damned legion of Dark Jedi
behind that
door, and I'd never know till they reached out and crushed my brain.

They kept
firing,
and the wall of red light held.

Vader felt
Leia's
fingers tighten around his arm. Father and daughter gazed around the
Great
Hall, searching for the source of the Emperor's voice.

At first the
voice
seemed to bounce off of every surface in the chamber, making Vader
wonder if
Palpatine was even really there. Then they saw him.

The familiar
dark-robed form was standing on the long balcony, smirking down at
them. He
shook his head and said in a regretful, patronising tone, "you
Skywalkers.
You really do just never learn."

Palpatine was
suddenly not on the balcony. For once, he hadn't been as showy as he
might have
been, and did not float down from the balcony to the floor. He just
winked out
of sight, and reappeared an instant later on the same level as Vader
and Leia.
He stood below the balcony, partially in shadow.

"What?"
he mocked, "no threats? No stirring words?"

They said
nothing.

He went on, "I
am disappointed in you, though, my dear apprentice. After all we've
talked
about, everything you've experienced, to think that you would still
cling to
your pathetic Light Side …"

"None of us
here are on the Light Side," Leia said impatiently. "Since we're all
on the Dark Side together, how about you just let us go?"

Palpatine
laughed. "I
will say one thing for you Skywalkers, you are always entertaining." He
took a step closer toward them. "What do you intend to do? Fight me?
That
won't be very easy, will it, Lord Vader? Have you shared with your
daughter the
little fact that you can't yet sense the Force? It shouldn't be very
long, it
only takes about four hours to regain one's sensitivity after exposure
to the
drug." A slow grin grew on the Emperor's face. "Unfortunately, my
friend, you do not have four hours."

Not taking his
gaze
from the Emperor, Vader threw his thoughts inward, fighting to regain
even the
tiniest handhold in his grasp of the Force. It felt like he was
attacking a
huge pile of boulders, throwing each one aside only to find another
beneath it,
and another. He heard his breath coming faster and louder than usual,
and saw
the Emperor's beaming smile.

"No fun, is it,
my friend?" Palpatine inquired.
"Not having any sense of the Force, when everyone around you has it.
So,
My Lord. What do you intend to do? Throw your puny self against my
power, with
no hope of victory?"

"Do I have a
choice?" Vader asked. For the hell of it, he threw a challenge into his
voice. At the moment there wasn't much else he could do to challenge
Palpatine.

"No, my
friend. I don't believe you do. It will be very amusing watching you."

Beside him,
Leia
ignited her lightsaber. Vader almost cursed, and wished he had told her
not to
do that. In his experience, it was an almost invariable rule that
whoever
initiated combat was going to lose. Obi Wan had struck first, before
Vader cut
him down on the first Death Star. Luke had made the first move in the
duel when
he lost his hand and went tumbling down the Cloud City maintenance
chute. But
then,
he thought, what difference does it make? Barring
a very large
number of miracles, we're going to lose anyway. Just now,
random statistics
about Jedi combat hardly seemed to matter.

"Well, my dear
girl," said Palpatine, apparently discarding any interest in Vader and
turning his smirk on Leia. "Let's see what you can do."

Leia raised the
glowing green lightsaber, but did not strike with it. Instead, as near
as Vader
could tell, she must be casting her hatred at the Emperor. Palpatine
took an
involuntary step backward, and for a moment there was an expression of
annoyance and surprise on his face. Then his smile was back. "Oh, my
sweet
young apprentice," he mused. "What do you think you can accomplish?
Do you really think your hatred is stronger than mine?"

Vader wasn't
sure
how he knew, but something about Palpatine's expression told him the
Emperor
was still focused on countering Leia's attack. Vader seized his own
lightsaber,
ignited it, and lunged at the Emperor.

It felt like
hitting a mass shadow in hyperspace. He was hurled backward, flying
across the
room and smacking into the side of the platform that had held his
display case.
As he lay there groggily trying to rebuild his senses, Vader thought he
knew
how Han Solo must have felt when he stepped into that banquet room on
Cloud
City and found himself staring at Darth Vader.

Palpatine must
have
picked up his thoughts. "Quite a learning experience, isn't it, My
Lord?"
Palpatine asked cheerfully. "Now you know how the ordinary mortals
felt,
every time your thoughts closed around their throats."

"You're
setting yourself up as the champion of ordinary mortals?" Vader grated.

"No. But it is
fun seeing you learn a lesson."

Leia hadn't let
herself be distracted from the Emperor, even when her father was tossed
across
the Great Hall. As she glared at Palpatine, Vader could almost sense
the anger
and feral hatred she was flinging at her opponent.

Or, could he
actually sense it? No, he decided after probing his feelings again,
that was
wishful thinking. All he could sense was the fact that he'd just been
thrown
across the room.

"I'm afraid,
my dear," Palpatine remarked to Leia, "you'll have to do better than
this. We're not putting on much of a show for your father, just
standing here
thinking at each other."

Vader started
to
get to his feet, though he really didn't know what he thought he could
accomplish. The second he made a move toward Palpatine, he'd probably
end up
doing another flying Darth Vader stunt.

In the next
moment
he realised that Palpatine's intentions were a good deal more elaborate.

Something was
prying Vader's fingers loose from around the hilt of his lightsaber. He
tightened his grip, desperately willing his hand to retain its hold. He
clutched so tightly that it would have hurt, if it had been his
original hand
instead of a prosthetic one. It made no difference. One by one his
fingers were
dragged off the hilt. With a strength that would have broken a hand
with
ordinary bones, his hand was wrenched open and the lightsaber sailed
free of
his grasp.

He gave an
incoherent yell of fury and tried to leap at the Emperor, not caring if
he did
just end up flying through the Hall again.

Before she
could
reach the Emperor, Leia was hit by a wave of power that sent her
staggering
back. She fell, hard, but almost as soon as she hit the floor, she was
scrambling to her feet again. The same wave slammed into Vader and he
found
himself once more flat on the floor. He struggled to sit up Ð
and could move no
farther. His legs seemed glued to the floor; he thought he would have
more luck
crawling out from under a crashed AT-ST. Tentatively he raised one hand
into
the air above him. Inches away from his head, his hand stopped. The air
around
his hand was cold and thick, as if he was trapped in an invisible
bubble of
half-frozen jelly. He tried to shove his hand further into it. The
coldness
oozed slimily around his fingers, but his hand did not move.

Vader jerked
his
hand out of the freezing nothingness. While he made another futile
effort to
wrench his legs off the floor, his gaze was riveted to Leia and the
Emperor.

With Vader's
lightsaber in his hand, Palpatine turned to meet Leia's next attack.

For a moment it
looked like an ordinary lightsaber duel. The blades met, red quivering
against
green. Then that first contact was broken and Leia swung a blow that,
if it had
connected, would have sliced the Emperor in half. Palpatine stepped
backward
and let the lightsaber slide out of his grasp.

The crimson
blade sprang forward to parry the blow, as
if it were still directed by Palpatine's hand. Vader saw Leia's
startled
expression as she found herself duelling only a lightsaber, with
seemingly no
one wielding it. And Emperor Palpatine stood back and smiled.

Gods
damn it to
hell, Vader raged at himself, don't just sit
here! There has to be
something you can do Ð

Palpatine was
using too much power. How long could he
keep this going, using the Force both to hold Vader immobilised, and to
direct
Vader's lightsaber against Leia? At some point he had to weaken, he was
expending his energy on too many fronts.

But it would do
them no good at all, if he only weakened after Leia and Vader were dead.

Do
something!

Vader turned
his
gaze inward. Don't watch, he ordered
himself. Leia's fight is her own. You
have your own duel to fight.

He had to move.
Had
to.

He turned every
sense, every nerve, to the task of detaching his legs from the Great
Hall's
floor. He heard his heart thumping in his ears, and the slightly
altered whirr
of his chestbox as it adjusted to his heavier than usual breathing. If
he'd
still been an ordinary human, he would have been sweating. As it was,
he could
hear the clicks and hums as his suit's environmental controls worked to
compensate for the increase in body temperature.

For a moment he
saw only blackness before him. His
senses whirled as if Palpatine had thrown him again, this time tossing
him far
enough to break loose of Coruscant's gravity. His legs had not moved.

Fine. So he
wasn't strong enough to free himself from
Palpatine's control. But perhaps he was strong enough to regain his own
access
to the Force.

Four
hours, eh? He thought. All
well and good, "my friend", but you've never tried your drugs on
Darth Vader before.

A momentary
glimpse
of Leia's face, as she fought against the disembodied crimson
lightsaber,
threatened to disrupt the concentration that Vader was struggling to
establish.
His daughter's face held determination, rage and fear in equal
proportions. He
closed his mind to the image. Leia is strong, he told
himself. "The
Force runs strong in our family," she will be strong enough to do what
she
has to. Now you must be strong enough not to fail her.

As he sought
the
calmness and serenity that he needed, he felt like a novice receiving
his first
training in the Force. Only this time he was his own teacher. The voice
telling
him to cast aside all other thoughts, all doubts, was his own.

His eyes were
still
open, but he did not see the fight going on in front of him. He saw an
image of
himself, standing in space, gazing calmly at the stars as they
glimmered around
him. One star moved tentatively closer to him, then nestled into the
palm of
his black-gloved hand. Then that image was replaced by a succession of
others,
coming faster and faster. The moment in his TIE fighter outside the
first Death
Star, when he felt that amazing surge in the Force from the Rebel pilot
in
front of him and almost, almost realised who
the pilot was. Anakin Skywalker
in the training room of Obi Wan Kenobi's school, brandishing his blue
lightsaber in his hand while he yelled something at Kenobi. Luke,
sweaty and
mud-caked in the swamp on Dagobah, staring into the cold darkness of a
cave and
asking what was in there. Leia, smiling faintly as her thoughts
exploded some
creature that clung to the ceiling above her, and then watching as its
blood
dribbled down the walls. Anakin at age ten, building a fort out of sand
in
front of the Skywalkers' farmhouse, then staring as the sand slipped
between
his fingers and something within him told him that, out there in the
desert,
his parents were dead.

In his mind, he
thrust his hand deeper into the sand, knowing that what he needed was
there,
just out of reach.

A yell of rage
jolted him into the present.

Leia had been
forced down to one knee. As Darth's eyes focused on the scene, he saw
his
lightsaber strike hers with such strength that the green blade was sent
spiralling out of her hand. It hit the far wall, beneath the balcony,
and lay
on the floor, its blade still glowing. Vader saw Leia glance at the
lightsaber
to call it back to her, all the while trying to scramble away from the
red
saber that still bobbed mockingly before her.

The green
lightsaber leaped, and started to sail back toward Leia's grasp.

Then the red
blade
swept downward, in a curving blow.

Leia's scream
of
fury and anguish burned through Vader's mind, as the Princess clutched
at her
severed right wrist which no longer supported a hand.